Privatization Private Prisons

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Privatization, private, or for-profit prisons are considered prison where individuals are physically confined or incarcerated for a standard period of time by a third party which has been contracted by the government or a government agency. The use of private prison in the United States has been a major topic for years. It truly came to light in 2016 during the presidential election campaign because the Democratic challengers called for an end to all private prison. There was also an announcement made by President Obama’s Department of Justice in August of the same year that the Bureau of Prisons would be phasing out its use of private ran prisons (theconversation.com. n.d.). This was due to the shrinking of the prison population which meant …show more content…
However, there is a large number of people that feel that they are needed because they bring together governments who are in need of additional prison capacity with private companies and they can provide the space and beds needed for the overcrowded prisons. Thus, state, local and federal governments have started to receive bids from the private firms or companies that operate private prison, jail and/or detention centers in hopes to decrease the prisons populations in some of their prisons. This is done simply because the state, federal, and local governments have more prisoners than they have prisons and the public sector is unable and/or willing to build more prisons (daily.jstor.org. n.d.). Therefore, private companies step in to earn revenue per prisoner for maintaining and operating the facilities. This in return helps the government to minimize waste as well as increase the capacity of those incarcerated. Unfortunately, this has been criticized by many due to studies showing there were no real minimal savings compared to the use of public prisons and that the security within the private prisons is lax (daily.jstor.org. n.d.). There were also issues with private prisons not having any real incentives to rehabilitate prisoners because they look at it as a business in order to earn profits from the criminal society. Thus, making it go against business sense to reduce criminality and the staff overturns rate is very high due to low pay which also has an effect on the lax security. Therefore, the private prison could be good if there was an increase in the pay, security and the treatment of the prisoners. However, due to public outcry private prisons are not the answer to the overcrowded prison
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